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Chic Dogs & Magnolia Dreams

The Art of Intentional Living

Chic Dogs & Magnolia Dreams
The Art of Intentional Living
  • Your Brain on Beauty: What Monet Taught Me About Art and the Mind

    Your Brain on Beauty: What Monet Taught Me About Art and the Mind

    April 28, 2025March 30, 2026 Books, Quiet Notes

    Stepping Inside a Painting Last month, I stepped into a painting and I don’t mean that metaphorically. I found myself standing in a softly lit space in Antwerp, where Claude Monet’s brushstrokes bloomed across the walls, floor, and ceiling. Water lilies rippled around my feet. Flowers shimmered and…

    Read More Your Brain on Beauty: What Monet Taught Me About Art and the MindContinue

  • The Quiet Rebellion of Reading: Choosing Depth Over Distraction

    The Quiet Rebellion of Reading: Choosing Depth Over Distraction

    April 21, 2025May 26, 2025 Books, Quiet Notes

    There’s something quietly radical about curling up with a book in a world that urges you to scroll. Even more so when you choose a physical book, your eyes will thank you for the relief. We often don’t realize just how surrounded we are by screens until we…

    Read More The Quiet Rebellion of Reading: Choosing Depth Over DistractionContinue

  • 10 Inspiring Lessons I Learned From Ina Garten’s Memoir

    10 Inspiring Lessons I Learned From Ina Garten’s Memoir

    January 12, 2025March 30, 2026 Books, Home & Garden
    2 Comments

    Be Ready When the Luck Happens I’ve read some pretty amazing books in 2024 but the one that stood out the most, and the one I was most eager to start reading, was Ina Garten’s memoir Be Ready When the Luck Happens. The title is absolutely delicious if…

    Read More 10 Inspiring Lessons I Learned From Ina Garten’s MemoirContinue

Welcome to the Chic Dogs & Magnolia Dreams Blog! So glad you are here. If you are interested in cultivating the art of intentional living, you are in the right place!

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𝑇ℎ𝑒 𝐴𝑟𝑡 𝑜𝑓 𝐼𝑛𝑡𝑒𝑛𝑡𝑖𝑜𝑛𝑎𝑙 𝐿𝑖𝑣𝑖𝑛𝑔
Gardener // Storyteller // Writer // Dog Mom
Flowers, dogs, books & Paris

The moral support we all need and deserve!🦊❤️🙅🏼‍♀️ The moral support we all need and deserve!🦊❤️🙅🏼‍♀️

 #encouragement #dogsofinstagram
Snippets of late summer. We're ready for Indian s Snippets of late summer.

We're ready for Indian summer.🌻🐕📚🩷

#latesummer #indiansummer
What if this is heaven?! This little life of ours What if this is heaven?!

This little life of ours.

In spite of all the heartache and struggles we all eventually face. 

What if this is heaven and we are all too exhausted, too angry to see it?! 

What if we zoom out for a second and really look at the details of life, of ordinary things...

A delicious meal prepared with care, a beautiful flower field, the ocean, a table filled with fresh food and friendly company, music that makes you pause, animals and the comfort they give us, feeling held by love, thrifted treasures, a vase filled with flowers, a garden grown from scratch, comfortable clothes to wear...

We would be in awe. 
We would finally be able to see the magnificence of ordinary things.
We would realize how fragile everything is and how much more care everything deserves.
Including us.

#simplelife #slowlife #ordinarylife things #intentionalliving
A visual diary of a gentle summer. 🎨Dogs 🎨Flower A visual diary of a gentle summer.

🎨Dogs 
🎨Flowers
🎨Home
🎨Books
🎨Simplicity
🎨Hosting dinners
🎨Seasonal cooking
🎨Intentional living
🎨Creative afternoons
🎨Ina Garten on repeat

#gentleliving
#August 
#slowsummer 
#slowlife
My babies were never meant to be human. I've kno My babies were never meant to be human. 

I've known, from a very young age that I did not want to become a mother to human babies. I had many adults and peers tell me that I would change my mind or that I would have regrets. They knew me as someone who was caring, someone who loved deeply. So in their minds, it would only be natural for me to become a mother.

I have. 

Just not the kind they had envisioned. Not the kind they think is the only one that matters.

I was a willful child and knew exactly what I wanted and even more so what I didn't want. I knew I wanted a house full of rescue dogs. I knew I wanted their company more than anyone else's. And yes, that is difficult for people to hear because we tend to place humans above any other species. 

I never have and never will understand why so many humans feel inclined to do so.
I don't see why we need to diminish, shrink, minimize any other species just to make ours more relevant. 

We are relevant, we can be magnificent... but so can other species. Acknowledging this doesn't take anything away from us. Quite the opposite. 

My babies were never meant to be human, they were meant to be furry babies. That I have always known.

#dogmom #dogs
Life lately from a homebody's point of view... Wh Life lately from a homebody's point of view...

Where everything centers around the home. Sun -  dried laundry, gardening, preparing home cooked meals with seasonal ingredients, hosting creative girl's nights, evening walks with the pups, flowers and more flowers, reading, writing, cleaning and tidying, flowy dresses, seafood dinners, sun-kissed skin, Brazilian jazz in the background, peaches everywhere, and weekly hydrotherapy dates with Marlow.

My heart is full.🩷🌸🐕🍉

I hope yours is too, wherever you may be.🩷

#summer #homebody #slowsummer
May every shelter dog find their peaceful forever May every shelter dog find their peaceful forever home. In this life and the next. 

🐕 Full bellies.

🐕 Gentle nose boops.

🐕 Soft blankets and comfy sofas.

🐕 "I love yous" every single morning.

🐕 Flower filled gardens and cool shady spots  under a tree.

🐕 Consideration and respect.

🐕 Beach and forest adventures.

#shelterdog #adoptdontshop #rescuedogs #dogsofinstagram #dogmom
We're ready for gentle mornings in the garden, sun We're ready for gentle mornings in the garden, sunkissed skin, slow evening walks with the dogs and peach cake on repeat.

#august #summerinthegarden #summerdays
A life that heals my heart. Again and again. One A life that heals my heart.
Again and again.

One that softens the edges of being a sensitive creature in a loud and cruel world.

Every time I bring a rescue dog into our home, a piece of my soul restores. 

Slightly, gently, irreversibly.

It feels like countering the darkness. As if some kind of balance gets restored. 

A defiance, a refusal to relinquish hope.
Regardless of how the sourness persists.

Every time I sow a flower seed and watch it grow into something that takes my breath away, I am reminded that beauty, awe and wonder are not frivolous. They are life-giving. 

That's what dogs and flowers teach me every single day. 

We refuse to be frozen by the heaviness... 

Instead we persist, we bloom, we experience joy, we create beauty, we take naps, we bring our neighbors brownies and flowers, we keep adopting the "unadoptable".

Not because it will stop all the darkness of this world. But it will stop your heart from turning just as dark, just as detached and sedated.

I know it is hard to be affected by it all, to feel the anguish coursing through your veins, the sense of hopelessness, the heartbreaking contempt you feel for your own species because you can't understand the cruelty and indifference...

Nothing brings you back to your own light like tending a garden, helping dogs trust the world and themselves again. 

It's easy to burn something down to the ground, it's also cowardice. But to lift something up, to create something, to nourish and heal... that is profound power and it's only possible if COURAGE is at the steering wheel.

#kindness #light #dogsandflowers
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